“Psst, yeh over there. Hey, you.”
You’re scrolling down the page when someone speaks. At first, you assume this is some non-sequitur bit of dialogue on the page you clicked on, some fragment of a story. Then you realize this paragraph is being written in the second-person omniscient style. It’s not talking about characters in the story.
It’s talking about you. The you reading this paragraph behind the screen.
“Hey, you. Ye daft blighter. Stop reading about yerself and read this.”
And someone is…speaking? To you. Rather rudely, but you know who it is. You realize there’s a single, crystalline figure in blue, a person in miniature, insect-like wings and body of semi-transparent ice, hovering on your screen, speaking…to you.
One of the Winter Fae. A sprite—not Shaestrel. You can tell because her text isn’t green.
“Green? Her voice sounds like the rolling earth. Her words speak to song and life; they’re the brush of wind in new shoots, the buzz of bugs, and the blood of nature itself! You stupid, fooking—is that what it looks like to you? Green? That’s so—ach! Nevermind. I knew it’d be shite. I cannae wait for someone better to do a moving picture like the one in the inn.”
The faerie folds her arms with an aggravated sigh, and she’s still here.
She’s looking at you. Straight through the screen, her head tilted, the guise of the Winter Sprite peeling back and revealing something else. Bright, yellow irises amidst black eyeballs, pallid green-grey skin, tangled, almost greasy hair—
“Not greasy, marshy. I’ll hit ye.”
—marshy hair parted over a sharp-toothed smile. Then it’s gone, and she’s the crystal Frost Faerie again. The faerie takes a bow.
“Good enough. My name’s Kaelis, one of the folk who came with Lady Shaestrel. One of the dead.”
Kaelis? You almost go to search her name up, but you’re sure, positive, you’ve never read that name before. She’s just one of the Winter Sprites, isn’t she? The ones who came with Shaestrel, almost all unnamed save for Theillige and Vofea. And—dead?
Kaelis looks up and shrugs. Her face isn’t filled with gloom or apathy. Her smile is resigned, but bright, and she chuckles like a swamp bubbling, a thousand miles of watery lungs rippling.
“Not yet, you say? Now, later, doesn’t change. I don’t think you’ve met me yet…ach, it doesn’t matter. Dead is dead. However it be, let it be glorious, for that was why we came. Remember my name, if you would…”
She trails off, then shakes her head as her voice turns distant with the age of immortality. Then sharpens, brisk and with far more mischievous interest.
“Listen, I found something. Aught of matter with our quests and battles, but interesting to ye, eh? Look at this shite.”
She points down, and you see an odd image:
The Winter Fae flits around it, peering at the letters and numbers without comprehension, but with real excitement. She turns to you.
“Looks like a puzzle to something important, but I can’t figure it out. I hate riddles and shite from your world. Nuthin’ rhymes. You figure it out, got it? I have a feeling it matters. The thing ‘o stories. Okay, I’ve gotta get back to my place in things.”
She pauses once and grins back at you.
“—And if they ever put me in the moving pictures, make me look proper good, eh? The least you could do. I hope…”
The faerie closes her eyes, and her voice is soft and serious.
“I hope it’s a good story. The best. I hope it ends well. But—”
She laughs.
“Don’t spoil it for me. Goodbye.”
And then she leaves you to it, if you wish. A silly little something that might matter. A short riddle, if not one the fae are familiar with. A brief adventure.